My blade on your skin
by Zouzou0517
Summary: How Bellamy and Clarke learn that not all blades are made to hurt I wrote this before season 6 aired and it's already online in French, so I'm not changing the name of the planet or any wrong info by now. Next part will be the last and I'll post it on Sunday.
1. Chapter 1

I'm going to end it.

I've made my decision. I'm resolute.

Nothing can stop me now. Or change my mind.

I close the door of the small bathroom in my house. The one I built with my bare hands a few weeks after our arrival on Rebirth, this planet 125 years from Earth that had finally welcomed me, the rest of Spacekru, the shreds of Wonkru, the last prisoners of Eligius, Madi... and Clarke.

I'm not pulling the lock. It's no use. I live here alone. Echo moved her stuff a month ago and has barely spoken to me since we broke up. No one will interrupt me or stop me from doing what may turn out to be a huge mistake.

I look up at me in the mirror above the sink. I watch myself for a long time until I feel like my reflection is another person. Another person looking at me. Until I almost managed to dissociate this image from my own body.

I notice the brown curls, too long, that is falling into my eyes. Some hair grays here and there, and I wince at the sight.

I still see the scar that runs through my left eyebrow, but no longer the one on my upper lip, which has disappeared under the mustache of my abundant beard. This same beard has covered some of my freckles, but most of them can still be seen on my cheeks and nose.

Wrinkles have formed on my forehead. The lines of constant concern that eventually got stuck on my skin and left their indelible marks. The same torment can be seen in my dark and constantly sad eyes.

I look at myself and I see a tired and exhausted man. A man whose hardships, time and grief have finally broken. Someone alone. Immensely alone. Someone who gave everything for the survival and growth of humanity, down to the very last ounce of the energy that filled him. Someone now empty. My brown eyes are blank. The glow that sometimes shone there has vanished with the rest of my hopes.

I think of all those to whom I have offered parts of myself and who have left without giving me anything in return, or not enough.

I think back to my sister, too busy rebuilding herself to try to recreate the bonds that once united us and that we thought were indestructible.

I think back to Echo, which I thought was mine and to whom I thought I belonged, and to our history, which was doomed to failure even before it began.

I think back to Harper and Monty, who chose to live their lives without us and to their son, left orphaned in a world that we still struggle to understand.

Emori and Murphy are spending their time arguing loudly, then making up even more loudly.

Raven and Shaw are still discovering each other with a growing and daunting complicity.

And all this... all this reminds me of Clarke.

Clarke ignoring me. Clarke avoiding me. Clarke walking away.

Clarke untouchable. Clarke to whom I can't address two words. Clarke who I miss.

To the hole in my chest that grows every time she lowers her head in my path, every time she ducks out when I approach her, every time she looks away when she meets my eyes.

To the "whys " that are spinning in my mind and that have finally made Echo almost crazy with rage and jealousy. To the "because" that I am trying to keep quiet and that made the one I didn't love enough to go and leave me.

Suddenly, the loneliness and sadness are so strong that I have to lean against the sink, shaky. I take a deep breath and turn on the tap. I hear the pump rushing somewhere in the house, then the water flows gently into the sink, a small engineering miracle by Raven. With a trembling hand, I grab the blade I borrowed from the kitchens earlier.

Borrowed, not stolen, they can get it back later, when I'm done.

I close my fingers on the cold metal and stare at myself one last time in the mirror in front of me.

It' s time. This has gone on long enough. I've put up with myself enough. With this ultimate act of courage, I turn the page of my life.

Slowly, I bring the blade closer to my neck and, with a sharp stroke, slide its edge on my carotid artery and...

The door of my bathroom opens with a loud crash and I jump, alert and ready for anything but the image of a totally angry Clarke. Confused, she faces me, clenches her fists and yells at me:

**"Bellamy! What do you think you're doing?"**

This is the longest sentence she's addressed to me since we woke up from cryo. Shocked, I watch the young woman. I notice the pale skin of her face, her desperate expression mixed with anger, her big questioning blue eyes and a thousand questions are rushing in my mind.

_What are you doing here?_

_How long have you been watching me?_

_What do you want?_

_Are you talking to me now?_

_Why ignore me all this time?_

_Do you need me as much as I need you?_

Of all the questions, I choose not to ask any and just answer her.

What did she ask me again? Oh yes, what am I doing...

**"Shaving."**

The expression on her face changes abruptly, like a sun, briefly eclipsed by the moon, which suddenly regains its radiance. Fear and sadness leave his features. A pretty shade of pink colors his cheeks. Her lips open with surprise in a perfect "O". Embarrassment appears in his eyes, which suddenly becomes elusive and leaves mine.

Immediately, I miss the azure of her sloes and I only wish for one thing, that she would look at me again. To dive my eyes into the ocean of hers and drown myself there forever. Unaware of the desire that is overwhelming me, she clears her throat and declares while staring at the ground:

**"Are you sure about that? I followed you... I saw you through the window and it didn't seem like it."**

This time, the words come out of my mouth on their own in a touch of sarcasm that has never really left me:

**"Are you spying on me now, Princess?"**

She opens her eyes wide to the use of the old nickname, which has never really left her either. In my mind, Clarke will always be the Princess of our first days. Proud, obstinate, haughty. She straightens her head and holds my irises from hers and suddenly, there it is again: the azure, the sapphire; the sky, the ocean. Clarke. She is there and I decide at this very moment that I will never let her go again.

Nevertheless, I smile at her outraged reaction and this action is causing a sharp pain in my neck, where the blade was slipping on my skin a few seconds earlier. I hold my hand to my throat and watch the blood on my fingers, lost, before swearing.

**"Son of a-"**

**"Don't move,"** Clarke orders me, interrupting me.

She suppresses the space that separates us in two strides. I think first that she' s going to hug me as she gets closer, but quickly understands her intention when she grabs the bloody blade and puts it on the edge of the sink before grabbing a cloth in my back, moistening it, then applying it to my wound.

The part in her that will never stop trying to heal and cure everyone has suddenly awakened in front of the blood that was now flowing from my wound, but that doesn't stop my heart from racing and my breathing from being stuck loudly in my throat in front of this sudden and unexpected proximity.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid..._

**"Sorry,"** she whispers, thinking my reaction is from pain.

But I am far from any kind of pain. All I can feel at this very moment is her left hand, so fresh on my skin. It's the right one, which she put on my hip in an absent gesture to keep her balance. It's her breath on my neck. It's her sweet smell, an indescribable and intoxicating fruity and floral blend. It's the pounding of my heart in my chest as it threatens to explode and come out of my rib cage.

I remain silent under the threat that the next words to come out of my mouth will be the inappropriate declaration of my unconditional love for her, of the suffering caused by her absence, by the loss of her presence with me. I feel them pushing each other on my tongue and clogging my trachea.

I loudly clear my throat as she continues her task, looking now at my injury:

**"You have to keep the pressure on this cut until the bleeding stops. It's not very deep, it shouldn't last very long. You won't need stitches. Whatever you tried to do, you clearly missed it."**

The irony is piercing in her voice, but as I meet her eyes again, I find a more intense feeling. The fear displayed on her face when she arrived in the room earlier is still there somewhere and I don't understand why.

My mind is spinning for a few seconds, noting the facts. I replay the scene in my mind and that's when it hits me.

She was in the mess hall when I stole the knife there.

She's been watching me.

She followed me here and watched me wander around the house, putting my things in order with an absent look on my face, then entering this bathroom.

Where I contemplated my reflection with an even more lost look for several long minutes before grabbing the knife and carrying it to my throat...

I see her smashing entrance into the small room and the despair on her face.

_Impossible..._

Did Clarke really think I was going to end my life? Do I look so lonely and helpless that the temptation to kill myself seems plausible even to those who know me the best?

**"Clarke..."**

Her name rolls over my tongue in such a familiar way that it destabilizes me for a second. I see, however, that it is also disturbing her. She imperceptibly tightens her grip on my waist and swallows hard. Right away, I felt the almost physical need to reassure her, to protect her.

Yet, I can hardly find the words and am just stuttering:

**"I would never-"**

I desperately try to pull myself together and search for the right words, those that will lead her to believe that I will never be able to act so cowardly. I'll never be able to hurt her so much. However, I need her to look at me for that. I need her to read into my eyes everything that my words can never express.

So I ask her and whisper, almost beg:

**"Clarke, please, look at me."**

I see the surprise tinting the expression of her face, but she complies and lifts her eyes to me. Any hesitation instantly disappears from her features, as it does from my mind and the words flow out by themselves:

**"I promise you I will never do that,"** I say with conviction at the same time as she claims:

**"I can't lose you too."**

_I can't lose you too. I can't lose you too. I can't lose you too._

The familiar words are resounding within me, taking me back to another time, to another life, to another moment. They are floating in the air, weighing down the atmosphere between us, making it heavy with meaning and tension. With them, other words come back to me with painful memories. With them, I remember that every time Clarke came close to me, it was to better leave me afterward, whether it was deliberate or not.

She had offered me forgiveness that I didn't know I was looking for before closing on me and Finn the door of the ship that had brought us to Earth to set the warriors who had come to destroy us aflame. Then she had disappeared, kidnapped by the men under the mountain.

_**"No,"**_ she had thundered at my suggestion to infiltrate the Mountain to bring it down from the inside, before sending me there without even a goodbye.

_**"Together"**_, she had promised me by lowering the lever in Mount Weather, before making the decision to leave alone in her quest for redemption, abandoning me to my own guilt.

Because of her absence, I had gone through the mourning of Gina and the rest of our people in a chaotic way and made mistakes that I could never forgive myself for, abominations that had led to Lincoln's death and caused irreversible changes in Octavia.

I had only found Clarke after the City of Lights to better lose her under the threat of Praimfaya. And even in those moments, I had never stopped watching her run away from me. In Niylah's arms. In missions that never failed to separate us temporarily.

Then, definitively, I had believed, when the wave of mortal radiation had fallen on Earth and I, in turn, had had to abandon her to what I had thought was a definite death.

Finally, six years later, when I thought I had found her again, when this miracle had happened to me, when I finally felt myself alive again when I saw her alive in front of me, fate had only taken a few weeks to play us, again, had forced me to give life to her worst nightmare, had pushed her to the worst betrayal, had kept me from her, again.

When all was over, 125 years of sleep had left us even further behind one another.

And when I thought that our arrival on this providential planet would finally give me the reunion I was hoping for, I was wrong again. I had only found this unsustainable and growing space that was driving me crazy, but it was as much my fault as Clarke's.

To all these memories, my anger roars and growls and I can't stop my voice from hardening when I ask:

**"What do you want, Clarke?"**

She seems surprised by my question, even though it is a legitimate one. If her fingers weren't preventing the slight bleeding from my wound at that very moment, I'm pretty sure she would run away. I almost see her turning her heels without a word to me, fleeing my gaze and floating outside this house.

Unconsciously, I hold my hand to the wrist that she has lifted up to my neck and squeezes my fingers around her skin. My dull anger doesn't stop me from selfishly wanting to keep her close to me.

She clears her throat before answering:

**"I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Raven told me about Echo earlier and I- I just wanted to make sure you were okay,"** she repeats, as if short of words.

**"Echo and I broke up a month ago."**

I feel I have to make that clear. I feel compelled to tell her and hope that she realizes the gigantic chasm between her and me that has kept her ignorant of such important information.

**"Yeah, well, I've only known about it for an hour. If Raven hadn't told me, I probably would have lived my whole life without finding out."**

Ah, there it is, the measured sarcasm. The biting irony. Proof that she too is aware of the distance between us. Proof that she too may be suffering as much as I am.

**"Anyway, it has nothing to do with me,"** she finally mumbles.

I want to scream. I want to shake her up. How to open her eyes? How can I tell her that my breakup with Echo has everything to do with her?

**"You couldn't be more wrong, Clarke."**

She flinches and, this time, cannot help but dive her sky-colored sloes into mine. I see her looking for answers to the questions she is refusing to formulate and I am burning to give them to her. However, the brightness of her gaze changes abruptly and darkens when she affirms, the voice nevertheless trembling:

**"Maybe, but in any case, I don't want to know."**

Her words completely paralyze me.

She doesn't want to know? How can she not want to know? She, who has always shaken heaven and earth to understand everything and to seek the truth about everything?

I suddenly feel tired of all these secrets. I am aware that I only keep some of them to protect her. Others only to protect me. A few more because I'm too much of a coward to expose myself.

But something has changed in me today.

I can almost list precisely at which points my perception of things changed.

The moment I opened my eyes this morning and the silence of my home deafened me.

The moment I sat in my usual place in the refectory, between Raven and Murphy, and despite their presence, the loneliness almost suffocated me.

The moment Madi's laughter pulled me out of my reflection and my eyes caught Clarke's silhouette talking with Indra while their respective daughters were having lunch next to them.

The moment I decided that all this could no longer continue and that I needed a drastic change.

The moment I lifted the blade on my skin.

The moment a plan began to form in my mind.

Get rid of the weight of my guilt, of everything that reminds me of my darkest days.

Seize the opportunities that life presents to me.

Live in the present moment.

No more regrets.

Be the person I used to be.

And once that's done, when I feel ready, feeling myself again: forcing Clarke to pay attention to me.

Make her notice me.

Make her look at me. To hear me. Listening to me.

Don't let her escape again.

Don't let her get away from me again.

But here she is in front of me. We are alone in this little house that I call mine. The heat emanating from her body radiates and warms mine as she stands so close. Yet her fingers are fresh through the fabric applied to my cut. Without realizing it, I kept mine tied around her wrist and can feel her blood pulsing under her thin, white skin. Her scent is overwhelming me. Her breath is caressing the bottom of my face and making me dizzy.

Suddenly, the steps of my plan mix and merge. Maybe the order in which I imagined doing things was finally wrong. Maybe I need to shake up my routine a little bit to finally change everything.

And finally, screw the plan. In a few seconds, a few heartbeats (hers under my fingers, or mine in my chest, I don't know...) I decided that I will do absolutely anything I want.

_Whatever the hell I want._

I take a deep breath and get ready to proceed, to reveal everything to her. What does that mean, she doesn't want to know? Not knowing why her absence is driving me crazy? Not knowing why I can't let her walk away any further? Not knowing why Echo left? So I'm going to make her understand.

I open my mouth, but she interrupts me again, and I almost start to think she's doing it on purpose. Except at that moment, she asks:

**"Do you want a hand with that?"**

I should ignore her. I should sweep his words away with a flick of the wrist, sweep away his attempt to divert the conversation with a disdainful snort. I should silence her with a tired sigh, a word or better, a kiss. I should be the one who speaks, the one who expresses himself and finally says everything he has on his heart. Except his question leaves me speechless and frozen. I have trouble grasping the meaning of her sentence. I can only stammer a little too weak:

**"A hand with what?"**

**"With this,"** she adds, pointing with her free hand at the knife still waiting on the edge of the sink.

Suddenly, I realize the true meaning of her offer. _Oh_.

**"Oh."**

_Oh_. And then I can't think coherently anymore. I imagine her hands on my skin. Her body, so close to mine. Her breath in my neck. There are endless thoughts in my mind, each one more impure than the next. My blood starts boiling in my veins and I'm pretty sure she can hear my heart racing in my chest.

**"Or not,"** she suggests, taking my silence for embarrassment and my lack of response for rejection.

If I wasn't already holding her, if my fingers weren't already firmly wrapped around her wrist, I would have grabbed her to better anchor my next words in her mind. To try to anchor in her, in the deepest part of her, that she never has to feel rejected beside me, that I will always make a place for her there.

**"Stay, please."**

I realize how pleading my words are when they leave my mouth. I recover by observing her eyes soften in front of the tenderness in my voice and say, more lightly:

**"I'd like some help if you don't mind."**

**"No, I don't mind. Not at all,"** she says.

His calm and decisive tone fills me with a calm that I haven't felt in a long time. I get lost in this feeling for a few seconds. It's the first time in months, no, for years, even centuries, since long before Praimfaya, that I have the impression that she won't turn her back on me and run away. Clarke's voice brings me back to earth:

**"Bellamy?"**

**"Mm?"**

**"I'm going to need my left hand for that."**

I realize at this moment that my fingers have not left her skin and that my grip on her wrist is made of steel. I almost reluctantly drop it and whisper:

**"Sorry."**

She smiles and answers a vague wave:

**"It's all right."**

She tilts her head, removes the fabric from my neck to observe the wound. Its condition obviously seems to suit her in the way the crease on her forehead disappears. I shift when she reaches the sink to rinse the towel and watch her as she meticulously washes the knife. She meets my eyes in the mirror and I don't have time to wipe the amused expression off my face before she catches it and asks:

**"What?"**

I can't stop the smile that stretches my lips. I know that if she could, Clarke would probably sterilize this blade before using it on my skin again.

**"It's just shaving, not open-heart surgery."**

**"Old habits..."**

Her words resound in me. Old habits... Is that why I always feel like I'm being drawn to her, like metal by a magnet, like weight by gravity. Is that why I naturally feel happier when she's around? Without her even saying or doing anything? Just the fact that she's here?

**"Weren't you going to use foam?" **she asked, the underlying reproach in her voice.

**"Not really."**

She rolls her eyes and my heart lightens a little bit more in front of this familiar vision. I watch her rummage through the closet under the sink and take out a small block of black soap, a specialty from Jordan Green that is proving more and more useful every day, a true blend of his parents' best assets.

Then I watch her washing her hands, moistening the soap and creating foam by rubbing her palms together, focused.

Once again, she meets my eyes in the mirror as she looks up:

**"What?"** she asks again, smiling shyly.

I want to tell her that she is beautiful in the light of this late morning. That I can never get tired of that vision of her in my bathroom, of her in my house. That I want to keep her here forever.

I settle for just:

**"Nothing. I missed you."**

Her smile fades, but I don't regret my last words. I need her to know how much she means to me. How much I can't live without her. Clarke answers nothing and just faces me in front of the sink she filled with water. She raises her hands full of soap in front of my face and asks:

**"Can I?"**

I nod and let her put her palms on my skin, soak my beard with white and fragrant foam. Her fingers slide on the surface of my cheeks, cheekbones, temples, then around my lips and along my neck and I shiver with a sigh.

She misunderstands my reaction for pain and apologizes in kind.

**"Sorry, I'm trying to avoid the injury, but it's normal for it to sting a little."**

**"It's not because of the pain, Princess. Trust me."**

My whisper is so low that I don't know if she heard me. In any case, she doesn't let anything show, turns her head and bends over to grab the knife, which she soaks in water before holding it to my face. The hesitation I see in her eyes surprises me, but I stand still until she asks me:

**"Can you sit down? You're a little tall for me."**

I smile as I answer:

**"I don't think I've heard you complain about our height difference before."**

Although she is indeed smaller than me, Clarke has always seemed to find the necessary height to try to win our fights. I had never paid any attention to it, had always had the impression that she was able to look directly into my eyes during our most furious arguments. I never had the feeling of lowering my head to look at her, nor did I ever feel like I saw her look up to watch me.

Nevertheless, I do as I was told and lean on the edge of the sink. We are thus at the same height when she answers:

**"Well, we've never done this kind of thing before."**

The truth behind this one sentence makes me dizzy for a moment.

I think back to all the moments we shared, the very moments when we got to know and appreciate each other, the very moments when she imprinted herself so deeply inside me that I am now unable to let her wipe herself away.

Like a tattoo that can't be removed.

A scar with which we learn to live with.

Clarke left his mark on me, but never by sharing such simple moments. The unfairness of our common past is such a painful wound that I don't know if I will ever be able to recover. Yet I can play lightly by asking, mocking:

**"Have you at least done this before?"**

I couldn't help but notice the slight shaking of her left hand on the knife handle. The way she is hesitating to apply the blade to my skin. The way her eyes are running across my face without ever seeming to decide where to start.

**"As a matter of fact, yes."**

It seems to give her the boost she needed and she gives the first razor stroke, high on my right cheekbone. Her eyes are focused, her eyebrows frowned, her mouth pinched, and I find her more beautiful than ever. I feel lucky to be able to admire her so closely while she can't see that I'm watching her, all at the task in front of her.

**"My father taught me. I was so young, I feel like it was decades ago."**

**"Try centuries ago."**

She swallows slowly in front of my comment and I understand the pain she doesn't express. It is difficult to comprehend the fact that the people we feel we lost yesterday have been dead for over a hundred years.

**"Then I was able to train on Wells a little bit," she smiles. "Even if it was more of an excuse on his part to spend time with me than anything else."**

**"I believe you," I laugh, "I definitely didn't have a beard at 17." **

I decide at this very moment that the little laugh she makes when she hears my remark is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. I want to hear it again. I want to hear it forever.


	2. Chapter 2

The silence spreads gently in the room around us, broken only by the rustle of the blade sliding on my skin, the rattling of the knife against the enamel of the sink and the sound of drops falling back into the stagnant and now troubled water. A deep calm overtook me, and I can read on her face that it reached her too. Her shoulders are finally relaxed. The fold on her forehead is gone. Her eyes are as clear as a cloudless sky.

I don't know if she realizes the hand she puts on my thigh at some point, or the pressure she gives with the flat of her hand for me to open my legs in order to allow her the space to slip in.

I don't know if she is realizing that she has come so close to me that I can almost feel her chest against my chest when she breathes in.

I don't know if she notices that she applies her fingers to my face to ask me to turn it from right to left or from bottom to top, rather than give me instructions aloud.

I don't know how long we stay like this, practically motionless, while she carefully shaves the beard I had left growing in space just to look like another. To someone other than the one who had left the woman he loved to sure death. To someone other than the one who had never found the strength to tell her that she was the love of his life.

My skin feels a little tight under the pressure of the blade, but I've already experienced much worse. I have experienced torture, I have experienced all kinds of blows; punches, knives, shots. I have experienced grief, desolation, shame, guilt, loneliness, regret. The depression has devoured me from the inside out until I was afraid I would never get out of it.

But I got out of it. I'm here, here and now. With her.

As the minutes go by, her presence right against me becomes natural, the silence in the bathroom becomes soothing. Anyone who would pass by at this moment could almost believe that we do this every day, that they are witnessing the scene of a trivial and peaceful life.

It's at that moment that I realize that this is what I want. A trivial and peaceful life. With Clarke.

My heart seems to be getting heavier in my chest under this truth and yet I am not afraid. This realization is not a burden that hurts me and slows me down, or keeps me imprisoned. It is a warm blanket in which I wrap myself in a day's snow, which protects and comforts me. I have made peace with what I desire.

Now, the only unknown in this equation is standing in front of me. I don't know how Clarke will react to what I'm about to tell her. It's the only thing that terrifies me: losing her again as I've never stopped losing her since the moment I met her.

I know that this time I won't survive it.

I look at her from the corner of my eye and my anxiety blends with bottomless happiness, an abyss in which I only want to dive if she finally agrees to come with me, to try the angel's fall at my side.

She runs the blade over my face one last time, cutting off the last remains of the beard that concealed from the eyes of the world who I was before Praimfaya.

I can see in her blue eyes the exact moment when Clarke comes back to reality.

The precise moment when she realizes where she is and what she is doing.

I don't take my eyes off her, the brown of my sloes fixed in the azure of hers.

At first, her irises are tinged with surprise. A surprise that seems so vivid that she doesn't even lower the hand that holds the knife at my neck.

Her eyes widen and I hear her breathing cut off before her voice rises, murmurs broken and barely audible:

**"Bellamy?"**

I don't think she's aware that she's saying my name out loud and intelligible. I don't think she hears the interrogation that punctuates it. I don't think she realizes that she has frozen in front of me and is looking at me as if she were seeing a ghost.

My throat is tight when I answer:

**"Yeah?"**

The sound of my voice seems to sink her even deeper into her state of stupor while her ocean-colored eyes fills with tears that nevertheless refuse to flow. The sadness of her gaze breaks my heart and my hand reaches by itself to the one she kept raised and tightened on the blade that was used to shave me. Gently, I loosen her fingers from the knife and put it in the sink behind me, without paying any attention to it.

For a few seconds, I stand there, holding her hand in mine and waiting for her to say something, anything. However, all the words in the world seem to have left her and nothing comes. Her mouth opens and closes several times, without anything coming out. Perhaps it is the same emotion that is holding me that is choking her and keeping her from saying the words that seem to be rushing in her mind?

The hand that is not tight in mine comes to palm my cheek. Her fingertips slide on my skin, which is now soft and silky, and I close my eyes to this new feeling of her hands touching me.

I let her fingers stroking my cheekbone, then the freckles that color the top of my nose. When her thumb gently runs around my mouth and tenderly grazes the now clearly visible scar on my upper lip, it's my turn to stop breathing. I shudder when she softly brushes the dimple of my chin.

The way she draws me with her fingertips is disarming with tenderness and makes me lightheaded. However, it is nothing compared to the moment when her hands finally leave my face and move down my neck to the collar of my t-shirt.

Her fingers close on the fabric and I just have time to open my eyes and glimpse at the tear that silently runs down her cheek before she closes the small space that separates us and puts her lips on mine.

The salt her tears left on her mouth is the first thing my brain registers. Then, slowly, it seems to comprehend what is happening.

_Clarke kissed me._

I'm frozen. All the things I wanted to do seem to have disappeared under this sudden impulse. All the words I wanted to say to her seem to have been erased by the touch of her lips against mine.

Her lips against mine.

Suddenly, I realize.

_Clarke is kissing me right now._

As my head slowly catches up with reality, I finally respond to her kiss and delight in the way her mouth is fitting mine, the same way my hand wraps hers: perfect, soft and warm. His fingers release my collar and come to rest on my hairless cheek, then Clarke pulls back a few inches to whisper:

**"You came back..."**

She gently brushes my mouth with hers and I murmur:

**"I'm here."**

This time, it's my turn to kiss her before she breaks it to declare:

**"You're still you."**

I nod and move forward to kiss her again, but she slips away from me before demanding:

**"Don't ever leave me again."**

She resumes our kiss and this time I have a hard time getting away to claim:

**"Don't ever leave ****_me_**** again."**

My head should fill with sad and dark memories, those of all the times fate has separated us, and my heart should break, as it so often does, under the weight of these reminiscences. Instead, it beats like a drum in my chest, and when Clarke again suppresses the small space that separates us by claiming my lips again, I fear it will suddenly explode under the force of the emotions it is enduring.

Clarke, always in sync with my thoughts, slips her palm where it beats to the breaking point and I'm sure she can feel it under the thin layer of my shirt. Immediately, its frantic race subsided and, finally, I regained control of my body.

I tangle my fingers to hers and pull her against me while placing my other palm on her waist. She briefly inhales and I take this opportunity to deepen our kiss, to taste the salt of her lips with the tip of my tongue before searching for hers desperately.

She moans softly under this new and delicious touch and pushes herself harder against me, between my legs, against my chest. She releases our fingers and encircles her arms around my neck as I wrap mine around her body. One of her hands runs through my brown curls and her nails lightly scratch my scalp. A shiver runs from head to toe, awakening other senses, and a deep need overtakes me.

Without breaking our kiss, I abruptly got up from the edge of the sink I was leaning against. My sudden height makes Clarke move back a few steps. Unable to part from her and her warmth, I walk with her until her back hits the closed door of my bathroom. She moans when I press my body against hers and her nails sink deeper into my skin, slipping from my hair to my neck and then pressing into my shoulders.

The pain is delicious, it reminds me that I am alive, it brings me back to this exquisite reality, but it is too intense for me at this moment when so many emotions and raw sensations are overwhelming me.

So I slide my hands from her waist to her sides, until I reach her arms, then her wrists, which I catch and nail them to the door, just above her head.

She nibbles at my lower lip as a rebellion but does nothing to free herself from my grip. I wrap one of my hands around both of hers and release the other to slide it along her arms and then on her neck. I lower my fingers in the hollow of her breasts, on her stomach, until I reach the top of her pants where I play for a few seconds with the edges of the button to seek her approval, ask her permission.

She offers me her consent by suddenly grabbing my hips with one of her legs and I take the chance without thinking any further, completely consumed by my desire for her. The button on her pants gives way without difficulty, immediately accompanied by her zipper and, finally, my hand slides along with her intimacy, over the fabric of her underwear. The dampness I find there fills me with an eagerness that I can hardly hold back and that nearly breaks my voice when I whisper in her ear:

**"Ready for me already, Princess?"**

The words of his answer strangle in his throat when my fingers find her clit and apply slight pressure on it. She suddenly jerks her head back and it hits the door. I can't stop a part of me from worrying about the slight shock she's just suffered, but as I'm about to ask her if she's all right, her throat now exposed is calling me and I'm compelled to put my lips there.

I explore her pale skin and enjoy the thrills that my kisses trigger. When I reach the lobe of her ear and nip it, her breathing abruptly stops and I suddenly hate the fact that she tries to stay quiet.

I want her to be unable to remain silent.

I resume the strokes of my fingers and she holds back a squeal. An uncontrollable impulse slightly lifted her wrists off the door before I held them there with more strength. My whole body reacts to her barely contained pleasure and I almost groan as I feel her doing everything possible to get closer to me, to seek the friction that her body, just like mine, desperately craves.

She takes advantage of my momentary weakness to release her wrists from my hand and to pull my mouth, lost on her collarbone, against hers with even more intensity than before. Our tongues are dancing under the rhythm imposed by my fingers on her intimacy. She moans loudly when I push the fabric to the side and insert a finger into her and that sound reverberates and explodes within me.

I was wrong earlier. Her laugh is not the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. It comes in second place after this one. I want to hear it again too. I want to hear it forever.

My wish comes true when I insert a second finger and start slow and tortuous comings and goings. After a few seconds, I finally find this soft and warm place that apparently makes her lose her mind. Lost in her own pleasure, she lets go of my lips and drops her forehead on my shoulder before whimpering:

**"Oh, my God, keep going..."**

As if I was only able to stop.

My fingers keep on working their magic while my thumb dances on her clit in small, sharp and effective circles that lead her directly to orgasm. This time, she doesn't hold back the moaning that shakes her whole body. If I didn't hold her, pressed between me and the door, she would probably collapse. She tightens around my fingers and, as I guide her through her wave of pleasure, I can only think of one thing: to do it all over again.

I want her and I want her entirely. So much so that I lose almost all coherence. And I can't wait any longer. I'm overwhelmed, almost dazed by my need for her. Fortunately, she seems to be on the same page as me, as we always do.

Her breathing has barely regained its normal rhythm before she starts struggling with the belt of my pants. I remove my fingers from her almost reluctantly in order to help her, but I am distracted by the moan that slips her away from this action. Immediately, my need to kiss her returns and my mouth finds its way back to hers.

I only realize that Clarke managed to unbuckle my cargo belt when it fell to my ankles, closely followed by my boxer. And suddenly, her hands are on me and I suddenly realize how much my desire is burning and consuming me. At first, her moves are tentative. She tenderly closes her fingers around me and strokes my length, as if to familiarize herself with it. When, a few heartbeats later, she starts her own slow, tortuous comings and goings, I decide that this is not what I want. I want more than just to come in her hands against the door of my bathroom, which will most certainly happen if she keeps up at this pace. No, I want everything.

And relying on Clarke's jerky breathing and gentle moans in my neck, that's what she wants too. When I grabbed her wrist and pulled her away, she straightened up and finally meets my eyes.

I wipe the questioning from her gaze with a tender and light kiss and whisper on her lips:

**"Not like that."**

I don't have time to develop the thread of my thoughts as Clarke gets closer and grabs the bottom of my shirt between her fingers. She helps me to take off the last piece of clothing I have left. She puts the top down while looking at me and I feel myself vibrating under her sapphire irises.

I go back to chasing her lips and she welcomes me enthusiastically. Every kiss, every motion of our mouths against each other, is a wonder, a miracle, pure magic. I'm dying of thirst and she's my spring. She's suffocating and I'm her oxygen. We are freezing; and every contact of our naked skins against each other; is the spark that warms us, the fire that keeps us alive.

However, something is not right and I frown as I break our embrace. She immediately notices my trouble and asks me what's going on, her breathing as fast as mine, which I answer:

**"How am I already naked when you're not?"**

She doesn't reply and just smiles. A sincere, light and fulfilled smile, such as I have never seen on his lips. A smile that will fill my memories from that day on, that will be my light in the darkness.

I clasp her waist with my arms and lift her off the ground with a swift motion. She laughs slightly as she slides her legs around my waist and I open the bathroom door to reach the bed in my room in a few steps. She's still laughing when I drop her clumsily on the bed. She's still laughing when I cover her throat, chest, and belly with quick kisses. However, her laughter stops when she feels my warm breath on her pubic bone.

She lifts her head up, surprised to find herself already naked, and asks:

**"When did you..."**

I don't let her finish her question and put my lips on her, which makes her cry out. My tongue traces the path from her entrance to her clit. Her hips lift up from the mattress when I kiss it and her loud, spontaneous moaning tears one of mine off. Clarke gets lost in her pleasure for a few moments, and I lose myself in the pleasure I give her.

Suddenly, I feel her hands in my hair, pulling slightly so that I come back to the height of her face, and I reluctantly heed. I can't resist letting her taste her essence on my tongue and shudder when she groans. She stretches under me and hangs her legs on my hips. She takes her mouth off mine and almost begs me to be inside her, to which I happily consent.

I slip inside her in one easy move and she is more than ready to welcome me, so wet that I find no resistance until my cock disappears entirely inside her. Our moans mingle and, at this point, we both stop.

Lust, desire, pleasure, everything is too intense, too colorful, too dazzling, and we are both blinded. However, if everything was too intense to start moving, everything is also too intense to stay still and already I am withdrawing to better return to meet her when her hips come off the bed while chasing mine.

Quickly, we find the ideal rhythm, neither too slow nor too fast. Perfect. As in everything else, we end up in tune, synchronizing, and our chemistry does the rest. Neither of us needs words to know what the other wants and I am sure I can say that I have never had an experience like this before today.

She tickles my chin with the tip of her nose and I know she wants me to kiss her.

She runs her palms behind my back and digs her nails into my shoulders and I know she wants me to hold her more closely against me.

She presses her thighs against my hips and her heels in my lower back and I know she wants to change the pace.

It's like I'm reading her mind and she's reading mine. As if we could talk without having to speak.

Clarke is all around me. Her skin, her perfume, the smell of her hair, her hands, her breath and the sound of her voice when she lets out those moans that drive me crazy: I discover all this and, strangely enough, it's as if I had always known them.

However, I will never get tired of the feeling of her body under mine, the roundness of her breasts under my palms, the sensation of her hips under mine.

I try to keep my weight as light as possible above her, but already unconsciously know that my body weighs on hers exactly as she wishes.

I stroke her cheek, neck, chest, and my mouth follows the path of my fingers, up to her erect nipples, which I tickle first with the tip of my tongue, then with the tip of my teeth to elicit a cry from her.

She moans and my hand comes to massage her hip, then her thigh, before slightly raising her knee higher.

This new angle suddenly deepens and intensifies my penetrations and this time she no longer moans but screams with pleasure as her channel throbs gently around me.

Then I am caught in the crossfire.

On the one hand, I want to make our embrace last for hours. I still imagine dozens of ways I can induce her pleasure, hundreds of ways I can make love with her, thousands of parts of her that I can savor. We have only scratched the surface of a million possibilities and I don't want it to stop.

Never.

On the other hand, more animal and less thoughtful, she pulses again around me when I withdraw almost completely before thrusting into her with a powerful and deep motion in that same delicious angle that draws out her sighs that are driving me wild, those moans that threaten to make me lose what little control I have left.

This feeling is incredible and in the end, I can't stop. Besides, Clarke doesn't want me to stop, judging by the way she starts to contract herself completely and whisper my name every time I hit that spot inside her that seems to make us lose all reason, both to her and to me.

Finally, when her climax hits and her orgasm roars, her cries, my name on her lips, her tight vagina around me, everything brings me with her into a storm of euphoria that takes us both out of space and time.

When I am about to pull out of her, still shaking, sweating and out of breath, she whispers a "**Stay**" which, strangely enough, breaks my heart at the same time as it fills me with hope and joy. So I stay and let my body weight over hers.

Slowly, I loosen her leg and come to take her face in the shape of my palm before putting my forehead against hers and diving my brown eyes into her azure sloes. Our breaths are still shattered and our bodies still burning covered with a layer of sweat, but I don't care, because I'm here with her, and it's like a waking dream.

I could tell her everything that has been going on in my mind for days, even weeks, maybe even years.

I could tell her that if Echo left me, it was because I couldn't find happiness anywhere else but with her, with Clarke. I could tell her all the times I woke up with her name on my lips next to a woman I couldn't love as much as I love her.

I could explain to her how much the last few months away from her on this new planet have made me suffer, how unable I am to stay away from her, how terrified I am of the thought of losing her again.

I could tell her that Praimfaya broke my heart, that I only recovered from her death when I found her alive six years later.

I could tell her how I fell for her step by step, without noticing it, without realizing it, since perhaps our first days on Earth.

But I do nothing of all this and simply place a voluptuous and tender kiss on her mouth, which she returns to me with the same languor. My lips meet hers with a delicacy that borders on idolatry. I enjoy its sweet taste, lazily passing my tongue over its lower lip until she catches it, then mixes it with hers in an equally sweet way.

When I open my eyelids again and am greeted by the ocean of her eyes, I understand that I will never have to voice to her everything I thought I needed to say to her.

_She knows._

The same way I know, too, everything she doesn't say.

Yet one day... I know that one day I will tell her. Because I want her to hear it.

She deserves to hear it.

When Clarke squeezes my shoulders to hold me against her, I give up all the strength - even the slightest - that was still holding my body weight from hers and let me go. I lay my head against her chest and she wraps her arms around me. She sighs comfortably underneath me and removes some of my brown curls that have fallen on my forehead.

Then she loses her fingers in my messy, sweaty hair and I shiver.

I shiver as she strokes my scalp.

I shiver as she rubs her fingertips on my shoulder blades and in my back.

I even shiver when my ear catches the dull beats of her heart.

_And now?_ I want to ask her.

But I feel so comfortable in the hold of her arms, so calm, so peaceful, that I decide not to ask the question. I know, anyway, I know that the answer can only lead to her, in my arms, in this bed, every morning and evening of every day.

However, Clarke hums slightly to get my attention and I ask without raising my head from the comfort of her chest.

**"What's going on?"**

My voice is soft, almost a whisper with a soothing and relaxed tone that I hardly recognize.

**"Nothing."**

I guess in her tone that's not the answer she would like to give, but the smile I hear in her voice doesn't give me anything to worry about, so I ask:

**"Tell me."**

**"I was just thinking... I could cut your hair too if you want."**

The smile that blossoms on my lips is honest, blissful, and full of love and hope. I hope she feels the first signs of it on her skin because I am too tired to even look at her, too content to let go of the hold of her arms.

I answer nevertheless:

**"Maybe tomorrow?"**

This time, it's her turn to smile as openly as I did, I feel it in my hair and also in her voice when she replies:

**"Okay. Tomorrow."**

**"Goodnight, Clarke."**

I don't even know why I wish her goodnight. A tiny part of me is aware that it's late morning and that the day is far from over. Yet I can't seem to care. I'm lost in space and time. Nothing matters anymore as long as I'm with her.

I am already almost asleep when she murmurs as she carries on her strokes through my brown curls:

**"Goodnight, Bellamy."**


End file.
